Cliff Notes
- A piece of the Soviet rocket Cosmos 482, launched in 1972, has re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere after 53 years in orbit, with uncertainty as to where and how much survived the descent.
- The upper stage of the rocket failed to propel it toward Venus, leaving the probe in Earth’s orbit, where it remained until its recent re-entry.
- Scientists tracking the craft believe it decayed upon re-entry, with various estimates placing its trajectory over areas from the Atlantic to Germany and Australia.
Half-tonne piece of Soviet rocket crashes back through atmosphere | Science, Climate & Tech News
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A car-sized piece of Soviet rocket has crashed back through the atmosphere, after 53 years in orbit.
It is not immediately known where the spacecraft entered the atmosphere or how much of it survived the blazing hot descent, with scientists suggesting it had burned up or broke up at the last minute.
Cosmos 482 had been set to land on Venus after being launched from the USSR’s spaceport in what is now Kazakhstan in 1972.
Instead, the upper stage of the rocket, which was responsible for powering it out of orbit, failed.
“The upper stage didn’t work right and it left just the probe in orbit around the Earth,” said Smithsonian astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
Parts of the rocket re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere in the 1980s but one chunk remained in orbit, which was thought to be debris left from the spacecraft.
“Years later, I went and looked at the data and went, ‘This debris […] stayed up a lot longer than the other stuff. It seems to be denser. It’s not behaving like debris,” said Mr McDowell.
“I realised that it was the Venus entry capsule from Cosmos 482, which has got a heat shield on it [strong enough] to survive the crushing force of Venus’s atmosphere.”
“It’s half a tonne. It’s about three feet across,” said Mr McDowell.
“As it smashes into the atmosphere, going at this enormous speed, the energy gets converted into heat [and] you get this fireball.”
If it hit the Earth, Mr McDowell said Cosmos 482 would be “going only a couple of hundred miles an hour”.
“But it’s still a half-tonne thing falling out of the sky at a couple of hundred miles an hour. That’s going to hurt if it hits you,” he said.
Scientists tracking the lander, however, believe it decayed as it re-entered the atmosphere on Saturday morning.
EU Space Surveillance and Tracking posted on X saying it “decayed within the last estimated re-entry window”.
The European Space Agency said the craft didn’t appear on radars in Wachtberg, Germany, suggesting “reentry occurred […] between 06:04 UTC and 07:32 UTC”.
However, the six major space organisations tracking the re-entry have placed it anywhere from over the Atlantic to Germany and even Australia.
Scientists are understood to be making further calculations to work out exactly what happened.